Inequality in Public School Admission in Urban China

236 Pages·2018·3.64 MB·English

by  Jing Liu

Education in the Asia-Pacifi c Region:
Issues, Concerns and Prospects 43
Jing Liu
Inequality in
Public School
Admission in
Urban China
Discourses, Practices and New Solutions
Education in the Asia-Pacific Region:
Issues, Concerns and Prospects
Volume 43
Series Editors-in-Chief
Professor Rupert Maclean, Office of Applied Research and Innovation, College of the North Atlantic-
Qatar, Doha, Qatar
Dr Lorraine Pe Symaco, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Editorial Board
Professor Bob Adamson, The Education University of Hong Kong, China
Dr Robyn Baker, New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Wellington, New Zealand
Professor Michael Crossley, University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Ms Shanti Jagannathan, Asian Development Bank, Manila, Philippines
Dr Yuto Kitamura, University of Tokyo, Japan
Professor Colin Power, Graduate School of Education, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Professor Konai Helu Thaman, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji
Advisory Board
Professor Mark Bray, UNESCO Chair, Comparative Education Research Centre, The University of
Hong Kong, China; Professor Yin Cheong Cheng, The Education University of Hong Kong, China;
Professor John Fien, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia; Dr Pham Lan Huong, International
Educational Research Centre, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Dr Chong-Jae Lee, Korean Educational,
Development Institute (KEDI), Seoul, Republic of Korea; Ms Naing Yee Mar, GIZ, Yangon, Myanmar;
Professor Geoff Masters, Australian Council for Educational Research, Melbourne, Australia;
Margarita Pavlova, The Education University of Hong Kong, China; Dr Max Walsh, Secondary
Education Project, Manila, Philippines; Dr Uchita de Zoysa, Global Sustainability Solutions (GLOSS),
Colombo, Sri Lanka
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5888
Jing Liu
Inequality in Public School
Admission in Urban China
Discourses, Practices and New Solutions
Jing Liu
The University of Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
ISSN 1573-5397 ISSN 2214-9791 (electronic)
Education in the Asia-Pacific Region: Issues, Concerns and Prospects
ISBN 978-981-10-8717-2 ISBN 978-981-10-8718-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8718-9
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Foreword
Since the 1980s, the Chinese government has promoted the principle of nine-year
compulsory education with exam-free, cost-free entrance to public schools based on
proximity to place of residence. Under this principle, children are supposed to be
assigned to lower secondary schools by lottery. However, in urban areas, severe
competition pushes parents to use various means to bend the system to access public
schools with better objective conditions, such as better school facilities, more quali-
fied teachers, superior students and leadership, and greater support from above.
Parents do so by making use of connections with power, by using resources, or by
manipulating the criteria for special selection based on academic excellence or spe-
cial talents. It is not only parents but also schools who want competent students, and
private tutoring institutions driven by commercial interests play roles to create dif-
ferent channels for school admission and the ways to utilize them.
Zexiao, which is the main theme of this book, means the diversified mechanism
of competitive admission to lower secondary school and the practices of stakehold-
ers related to it. The literal translation of it in English is “school choice,” but its
actual meaning is very different from its generally accepted idea of offering alterna-
tives to the students and parents to better fit their educational needs. Zexiao is like a
giant elephant. One may be able to touch a part of its body but it is difficult to grasp
the whole shape of it, because it is largely hidden under the surface of formality.
While Zexiao is a social phenomenon which has caught the attention of the media
and the public in the urban areas, it is more likely to be discussed in a superficial and
sensational manner. There is still only limited academic discussion based on critical
and comprehensive analysis of Zexiao, its ethical implications, and effects on the
increased gap of educational opportunities among social classes.
In this book, Dr. Liu successfully uncovers the social, structural, and economic
dynamics behind Zexiao and specifies the elements which constitute the whole
mechanism, through the analysis of discourse surrounding it. For this purpose, he
reviewed newspaper articles (professional papers on education, national papers, and
local papers of major cities) dating back over thirty years, in addition to policy
documents, reports, and education-related regulations. To match the analysis of dis-
course with that of practices on the ground, he also conducted a case study of
v
vi Foreword
schools in one school district of Beijing, interviewing administrators, school princi-
pals, teachers, and parents. By combining these two sets of analysis, he presents the
complete picture of this giant elephant from the macro policy level to the micro
level of schools and individual actors involved in its practice. It is a major strength
of this book and a potential area of contribution to academic and political
discussions.
In addition, Dr. Liu considers Zexiao not only an issue of manipulation of the
school admission system among the urban well-to-do families, but also in relation
to the restricted educational opportunities of the poor and migrants from rural areas.
By adopting the theory of social closure, he tries to explain the phenomena as mutu-
ally enforcing processes of reproduction and exclusion. The uncoordinated but col-
lective acts of people who try to maximize their own profits by monopolizing the
limited resources and opportunities have accompanied the practices of exclusion.
Dr. Liu points out that it was actually the strong control by the centralized state
which caused such practices to emerge and deviate the admission process through
informal means, and thus systematically exclude those without power, regardless of
the formal arrangements to ensure equality.
Dr. Liu Jing was among the first group of students whom I supervised in Nagoya
University and the first Ph.D. who flew from my humble nest. He is one of the most
hardworking students in my memory and always tried to do all and even more than
what was suggested to him. Looking back, I feel that he has proven himself by
devoting his best efforts to the field of his choice. As he writes in the Preface of this
volume, Zexiao overshadowed his own earlier life. The elite secondary school which
he managed to enter as a “special talent student” was not necessarily a comfortable
place, restricting him in the pursuit of his own curiosity and assessing his capacity
for something for which he did not have passion. After being treated as an unsuc-
cessful student, he came to Japan to restart his tertiary education, with a deeply held
unyielding spirit under his softly smiling face. The major he chose was education.
The steps he took to untangle the sociopolitical structure of Zexiao was, I believe,
also a journey to make sense of his adolescence. The rewards he received for his
hard work, such as dissertation awards, must have boosted his self-esteem and con-
fidence gradually. Now, Dr. Liu Jing publishes his comprehensive analysis of the
school assignment mechanism in the capital city of China, which is largely invisible
from the eyes of international observers. I have no doubt in its academic value, par-
ticularly for being published in English, and I am proud.
Congratulations, Liu Jing.
Applied Social System Institute and Graduate Shoko Yamada
School of International Development
Nagoya University
Nagoya, Japan
Preface
It has been eight years since I became keen on investigating how people interact in
admission to public junior high schools in urban China and why they had to do so.
I could not clearly tell why I was so interested in this topic until I realized these are
all growth paths that I experienced. As a primary school student in 1994, I experi-
enced abolishment of entrance exams to junior high schools in Beijing. Also, I felt
how my parents became worried about my schooling in a “bad school” based on the
principle of proximity-based school admission to junior high school. Moreover, I
observed how they were forced to visit my class teacher and school principal with
gifts for their “help” with a recommendation of my promotion to “good schools.”
Moreover, the experience of playing the violin as a hobby also let me understand
that knowledge is no burden right after I was successfully enrolled into a “good”
junior high school as a “special talent student” who just knew how to play the violin.
In addition to these, I learned many other alternative ways of going to good schools
from my buddies in the same class. Some of them went to good schools by paying
additional fees. Others gained enrollment by partnerships between the good schools
and the work units of their parents. More than 20 years have passed, and I recog-
nized that students and parents had more difficulties and challenges to access good
schooling in urban China from media, research papers, stories of friends, and con-
versations between passengers on the subway or buses. And I knew the options and
processes for entering into a good school became increasingly more complicated
and more competitive than what I experienced in 1994. Upon entering the research
community––as a Chinese citizen and researcher in the field of China’s education
development––I told myself that I should stop taking things for granted. And I felt
a desire to explain about the unique urban education phenomenon regarding admis-
sion to public junior high schools that exists in urban China.
The specific subject of the book is the competition in urban China for student
admission to public junior high schools from grade 6 to grade 7 (G6 to G7) called
Zexiao (a straightforward English translation is “school choice”). In the interna-
tional context, school choice is considered a government tool for promoting free
choice in parents’ decisions about their children’s education, the improvement of
school accountability, efficiency and educational quality, or the prevention of social
vii
viii Preface
problems. Conversely, in China’s context, Zexiao is not supported by the govern-
ment at the compulsory education level (G1 to G9) since it violates the essential
principle of admission to public schools. Rather, Zexiao, which usually takes place
around entry to G1 or G7, the beginning of primary school or lower secondary
school, creates competition among students, parents, public schools, local educa-
tion authorities, and private tutoring institutes. Moreover, in the recent past, compe-
tition caused stratification in admission to public junior high schools and led to
educational inequality in public education in urban China.
In the midst of millions of words that been written and the countless academic
papers or news reports that have been published, there are few which interpreted
how the positional competition in admission to public junior high schools devel-
oped in the midst of rapid social change in Chinese society. Moreover, it was still
difficult to figure out how people engaged and interacted in such competition and
what are the reasons behind people’s engagement and interaction. We are hard
pressed to find accounts of why there is a rise of Zexiao despite the government
continuously saying no to such practices for decades. In addition, little is available
to inform us about the current solutions to deal with the competition and social
stratification in admission to public junior high schools in urban China.
This book addresses these omissions. It distinguishes Zexiao in the context of
urban China from school choice in the global debate. Then, it interprets the develop-
ment of Zexiao by analyzing public discourses on such practices between the 1990s
and the 2000s. It also reveals interaction among stakeholders in Zexiao to further
indicate how people engage and interact in Zexiao and why they do so through a case
study of Community A in Beijing. In addition, it provides a review of current new
solutions made by the government to deal with the ongoing competition which has
caused social exclusion and educational inequality. More importantly, by adopting the
theory of social closure, this book provides a new framework for deepening analysis
of the dynamic interactions involved in social exclusion to further construct knowl-
edge of the interrelationship among people in the context of today’s urban China.
I am not sure to what extent I have successfully investigated the omissions above.
This book is a highly relevant source of information about policy making and policy
implementation in balancing efficiency and equity for public education policy mak-
ers and planners. It provides scholars with comprehensive data and a detailed inter-
pretation of the diverse issues relevant to educational inequality in Chinese public
education in the context of a country in rapid transition from a profit-driven society
to a more balanced society post 2015. Moreover, it adds the different interpretations
and dynamic practices of Zexiao as competition for student placement to the broader
field of school choice research. These can be taken as sources for expanding a com-
parative study about parental choice between countries in non-Western contexts.
Tokyo, Japan Jing Liu
Acknowledgments
This book is based on a revision of my Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the Graduate
School of International Development, Nagoya University, Japan, in 2013. To
acknowledge properly the generosity of the people with me on this journey, I started
to recall people I met, places I visited, and stories I experienced in the past years.
Breaking with tradition, I express my grateful thanks to my parents who gave me
life in the 1980s and allowed me to experience being a special talented student for a
successful admission to public junior high school in 1994. Their engagement in
making efforts to send me to “good schools” definitely left me with a vivid memory
to understand why and how parents actively engage in children’s schooling in
China. Also, I acknowledge their unconditional support throughout my student life.
Their understanding of my dream and patience for the time-consuming process for
my Ph.D. study always encouraged me to move forward.
My sincere and warmest appreciation goes to Dr. Shoko Yamada, my former
academic advisor and the chairperson of my dissertation committee, for her con-
tinuous guidance, critical but constructive comments, and patient instruction intel-
lectually and mentally in the past years. Her kind offers of involving me in her
research projects and paper writing gave me precious experiences and training for
becoming an independent researcher in the academic world.
My greatest gratitude to the people involved in the fieldwork conducted in
Beijing. My appreciations go to all the respondents who generously shared their
personal experiences of Zexiao with me for this study. Their concern, dedication,
and commitment to equality in high-quality public education in China deeply
touched me and pushed me to move forward to explore why inequality exists and
how to deal with it.
Finally, I heartily express my appreciation to Dr. James Jacob and Dr. Francis
Peddie, who generously proofread the book draft and kindly helped me to polish the
language used in the book. A special thanks to the anonymous peer reviewers of the
book for their comments to improve the shape and the content of my work. I also
owe grateful thanks to the team at Springer for their thoughtful suggestions and
boundless support for publishing the first book of a young scholar like me.
Tokyo, Japan Jing Liu
ix